Ask any teacher if telling a student not to push the button has ever worked, and they will laugh in your face (and should). However, it’s not just students who tend to want to idle their fingers over the proverbial button, as adults can be just as dramatic (and certainly more annoying, especially if they’re a politician or work at the DMV). ‘Psychological Reactance’ is what you call the condition in which these feelings stem: the idea of wanting to do something when you were told directly not to. There is also another form of this, a subcategory if you will, called ‘Psychological Dumb Movie Reactance,’ which is the (deranged) condition in which someone (like myself or a cheesy film critic) warns you not to see a terrible, rotten, no good, very bad movie and yet you can’t keep your finger from touching the remote and hitting the play button. Just take comfort in that you are not alone in this, as thousands suffer from this (real) condition. But have no fear, as there is a cure in these streaming times… the ‘power off’ button! Sadly, the audiences who paid their hard-earned money in the 1960s did not have this option at the time and had to succumb to the call of alluring poster art and the promise that the audience would see horrors beyond their wildest beliefs, like when they saw the 1965 Italian hoagie smorgasbord of melted crayon red blood called Bloody Pit of Horror (a.k.a The Crimson Executioner)!
The hardest part of this movie (besides actually sitting through it) is the funkadelic nature of the world they created. Pastels, polyester, and poor taste surround a film trying to get us to give sympathy to people who want to worship the Marquis De Sade (hey, don’t yuck someone’s yuck). From the fashions to the hairdos to the lingerie (yes, Victoria certainly has no secrets about this crew), it is like watching a funkadelic retro Sears Roebuck catalog come alive (or be D.O.A. Italian-style). Although it must be acknowledged, this film was Saw long before there was a Jigsaw, deliciously setting up improbable scenarios for people to die existentially, starring a hunky Mickey Hargitay (The Loves of Hercules and one-time Mr. Jayne Mansfield) walking around oiled, with his shirt off for most of the movie. Bringing in on its own a very gracious sixty-five million lire (which equated to a torturous one hundred thousand dollars), the film, like the main executioner at the beginning of the film, was dead right from the beginning until a successful run on the drive-in circuit when partnered with Terror-Creatures from the Grave, starring another Italian dish to die for, Barbara Steele!
Traveling through the picturesque landscape of Italy, a group of agents, models, and photographers, intent on making a photonovel of horrific places along the shore, end up at the infamous Balsorano Castle, where decades ago The Crimson Executioner was tortured to death, being nicely encased in an Iron Maiden (he was breaking the law! Breaking the law!). Upon arriving, they find it is inhabited by a recluse actor (Hagerty), who happens to know one of the former models who happened to be his former fiancée (who seems not to know that this is where he has been hiding). Instead of sending them away, he finds the opportunity to get rid of all of them one by one via dressing up like his heroic fan obsession crush The Crimson Executioner, torturing them in insane ways from strangling someone driving a Rolls Royce to tying a model up in a spider’s web filled with arrows (along with a spider that might be real or not, though if we are supposed to take it seriously, the laughs from the audience won’t help)! Will the actor get the best reviews of his career by giving a killer performance, or will the remaining members of the group escape the doom and gloom from this so-called De-Sade-a-want-to-be?
Spiking your chest at a sharp eighty-seven minutes, and directed by Domenico Massimo Pupillo (who went on to helm such whoppers as Lady Morgan’s Vengeance and Django Kills Softly), the director was quoted as saying he was “disgusted” by the films he had made and spent most of his later years in television (where nothing awful is ever shown). Like most film dell’orrore italiano, this film can be seen on most online platforms due to its copyright being put through the guillotine. So, if you get the bug to be famous and happen to want to start a new modeling career, make sure you have a face the camera loves (or the agents will hate you) and remember the number one rule for taking pictures in places that won’t have a homicidal maniac chasing after you in a crimson one-piece pajama – Location! Location! Location!
